The Week In Links—January 3

April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman–can we trust them with the Lusty? (Photo by Nick Gripton on Flickr, image via Eater)

The Lusty Lady’s vacant space will be reopened by Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield, who own the cafe next door, as a cocktail bar which “will pay homage to what the Lusty Lady was…the wonderful seediness, and the dying breed of seediness.” Apparently, “initial design ideas include…a riff on peepshow windows ‘wherein a customer inserts a dollar and then a window opens to reveal a bartender—instead of a stripper.’ ” Holy hipster gentrification, Batman.

Rebecca Woodard, one of Eliot Spitzer’s escorts, was pimped by the city of New York: “Manhattan prosecutors insisted she continue seeing clients while working undercover—and then forced her to turn over all of her earnings and gifts.” Oh, and Spitzer wanted to pretend to be a self-defense instructor testing a student by attacking her. Yay gubernatorial role play.

Honduras Redtrasex, the Network of Sex Workers of Honduras, demand justice for the murder of four local sex workers on December 30th, when five Centre City San Pedro Sula sex workers were shot, including one heavily pregnant woman. One woman survived and is in the hospital in stable condition. RedTrasex’s statement also noted another recent sex worker murder on December 15th.

Melissa Gira Grant lists her picks for 2013’s Best Sex Work Writing. Tits and Sass is honored to have so many of our posts, as well as outside posts by our contributors and co-editors, included.

New regulations came into effect on January 1st in Saskatchewan which allow bars in the province to feature strippers. Anticipating this provincial change in liquor law, Saskatoon’s city council voted to isolate strip clubs in heavy industrial zones, legislation in the same spirit as the adult services bylaw they passed in July 2012, which requires escorts, massage parlor owners and anyone working in adult entertainment to get a business license. More tut tutting and talk ABOUT sex workers from city officials without any input FROM sex workers is covered in the Star Phoenix.

Meanwhile, new federal Canadian laws which went into effect on Dec. 31st ensure that labor market opinion applications from employers seeking to hire foreign workers in the sex industry will no longer be approved. These rules come almost seven years after the federal Conservatives first promised to put an end to the “Liberal strippergate,” in which temporary work permits were issued to hundreds of exotic dancers by the previous government. “Strippergate,” seriously? Hiring migrant workers is somehow a scandal worthy practice?

File under “Not News to Sex Workers”—an op-ed in the Irish Times ponders the unholy alliance of the religious right and radical “feminists” in their attempt to criminalize sex workers’ clients: “By indulging in this pseudo-philanthropic meddling (‘we know what’s best for you, you must be saved’) these ideologues, both secular and religious, also deprive sex workers of the second most important and hard-won freedom after the right to say no: the right – if they so choose – to say yes.”

And to answer a rhetorical question, Sweden’s Laws—Do We Really Want Them In Northern Ireland? No, you really, really don’t. Swedish sex workers’ rights organization Rose Alliance’s Pye Jakobsson, whom Tits and Sass interviewed about the state abetted murder of Rose Alliance member Petite Jasmine, is quoted extensively in this editorial.

Here’s a personal essay in The Gloss’ Harlotry about a sex worker and her friend who landed in an exploitative situation and got out of it by their wits alone: The Time I Accidentally Got Trafficked (part two is here.) Although it’s a good reminder that if you can help it, don’t fly to Florida to make “fetish videos” on the word of a sketchy dude without enough money to get home, it’s also the sort of situation industry abolitionists could help with rather than collaborating with rescue raids and arrests.

A great piece from the Conversation we missed last month about the politics of male sex work in Ireland: “Put simply, we tend not to take the issue of male sex work seriously.” Man, we just love the Conversation, really–in another December post they empirically demolish the Swedish model of criminalizing sex workers’ clients.